Episode 95
Who's the other goth girl?! * Overnight, Vahlka hears a horse and rider pass the spot where the party is sleeping.In the morning, we wake up feeling like p diddy , and set off toward the corpse of the Green Warden. * We hear crying up ahead, Barkley sneaks up to investigate and finds a wrecked campsite. She hears a person crying up in the trees and sneaks around, she tries to get into one of the abandoned bags but the hidden figure flings a firebolt at the ground to warn her off and Barkley scampers back to the party. * The party is tailed by a hidden figure until Godfrey reaches out to it telepathically to try and figure out who it is and what it wants. The creature comes down and introduces himself as Flowing Waters of The River Styx through the Dark Places of The World or "Styxie", an Eladrin scholar/wizard/mothman. He asks for our help and claims his group got sent here by a dark elf priestess unwillingly. His allies, Justicia (dragonborn paladin of baldur) and Salem (a human ranger) have gone mad over the last week and attacked him and Heth. (a sand-elf... ioun cleric??) * Styxie shares a recipe he has with Lucius of how to make a potion from the flowers that grow around the river styx that will prevent the consumer from going mad. He also explains that the river can manifest creatures to defend itself, like a body's immune system. * We tell Styxie that we'll help his friends if we can then Godfrey casts banishment on the pair of them. Sending Styxie back to the feywild and Heth to the material plane. * We continue on an see a number of glimmering pale green lights around the corpse of the green warden. We decide to ignore them and press on until we find the River Styx. The light flares brightly, and there's some contention but we decide to ignore it. * Lucius is attacked by a dog-sized creature that bites onto his arm briefly before Olivia dispatches it in a single stab. We see a great number of these creatures milling about on the river's banks + in the water. * We follow the river a ways before it becomes apparent that we are being followed by the source of the green glow. Upon realizing this Vahlka turns and moves toward the source. She finds a hooded figure and grabs them by the back of the cloak and lifts them into the air -- demanding to know why they are following us. * The figure turns out to be Calliope, accompanied by her construct Thresh. This reveal does not seem to comfort Vahlka at all. Who intermediately makes several bad insight checks and is immensely suspicious of the shadar-kai. Calliope tells us the Raven Queen told her to come find us and that she tracked us here to tell us that her missing friend is in Thanatos at the infernal incursion, he spoke of a copper dragon being there as well. The party assumes that this is Minerva. * Vahlka urges some caution and Lucius argues with her, but it quickly becomes apparent the paladin is just concerned rather than actually trying to stop her. Lucius asks if she's going to miss him and Vahlka pulls his head down and smooches his forehead and says "You better come back, Sparky." * Calliope asks Vahlka if she can use some suspicious magic on her and explains a bit about how soul magic works. Vahlka rolls a 19 on an arcana check and lets the shadar-kai do so. Calliope kills Vahl for a second and now she can throw her 30ft. I guess she is now a league of legends support. * We move on and see a small island with a copse of the flowers Lucius needs for the madness preventing potion on it. We debate briefly what to do and then Lucius, Godfrey, Olivia, Deacon, and Barkley all dimension door over with Vahlka, Calliope, and Thresh all remaining on the bank. Intermediately a bunch of the Styx River monsters start to rise out of the water and we break for the night.